Wedgie's world is an irregular contribution to discuss and explore how Intelligent Design (ID) is pulling a 'wedgie' on science.
Wedgie: 2. The condition of having one's clothing stuck between the buttocks, often from having had one's pants or underwear pulled up as a prank.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Vacuity of ID: Accusations of censorship

Accusations of censorship at Panda's Thumb

Sal occasionally makes to claims. The first one is that he has 'debunked' Shallit and Elsberry's paper and the second one is that Panda's Thumb censors the link. I will show that neither one seems to have much relevance in supporting facts.

I will show the following:

1. Salvador's 'forbidden' URL is hardly forbidden. There are at least threads in which the URL can be found.
2. Salvador's posting problems are likely due to a recent update to the SPAM filter which removes links with multiple 'hyphens'. I believe the rule is three or more.
3. Salvador himself promised to take the discussion to antievolution.org
4. A few off topic postings by Salvador, and many others were not censored but moved to the bathroom wall.
5. Since PT has an open submission policy, the failure on Salvador's part to submit his 'forbidden URL' 'arguments' for consideration, further undermine his claims.

And finally, while Sal may think that he has rebutted Elsberry and Shallit's paper, the forbidden URL nor any other arguments so far presented by him, seem to support such a conclusion.
For many more examples of the vacuity of intelligent design, I suggest the reader checks the The Vacuity of Intelligent Design blogsite.

Wesley Elsberry has updated the this thread with his comments and observations.

If people can't see through the rather sophomoric posturing Salvador engages in ("To write a paper to refute CSI and not include the most central definition of CSI is inexecusable", when we extensively critiqued the mathematics that instantiate CSI according to Dembski, for instance), I don't know that further discussion on my part will do much to correct the situation.

In This thread Salvador responds to "Elsberry took a break from shadowing Bill Dembski" by asserting that:

Well, he was getting conistently hammered with the truth. PandasThumb began occasionally censoring my posts which contained:

The Forbidden URL exposed the misrepresentations and uncharitable readings of Dembski's work by Elsberry. It exposed their illegitimate methods of attacking Dembski's work.

I mean, there were times, I tried to post, and I got the message about "can't post because of objectionable content". I figured how to redirect the URL and it got through. A couple other times Elsberry and PvM especially deleted my posts with a link to Elsberry's work to the bathroom wall.

I guess Elbserry got tired of getting called on his gaffes in the paper he wrote with Shallit (Dembski's former teacher) against Dembski.

I encourage all IDist anytime Elsberry gets on a public bulletin board, hammer him with the contents of The Forbidden URL. Make sure he's called into account for his misrepresentations and uncharitable readings of Demski's work.

When I tried to post a link to it at PandasThumb, it got blocked, I had to supply another URL to sneak it through. That is, they had a block on that specific thread and not the rest of the ISCID site. LOL! So I found an alternate URL to slip it through. Same with my website. Sometime I get through sometimes I don't.

What does that tell you? They don't like it when I call them on their misrepresentations. I can't post too much at PandasThumb because PvM and Elsberry delete my posts to the bathroom wall. I can't start a thread there like the critics can here. They don't want us exposing their misrepresentations which they used to attack Dembski and Meyer's paper.

Now I ask, is that a fair and civil tactic? Do I get irked seeing misrepresentations hurled at me and Bill Dembski and other IDists day in and day out on this forum and others?

Salvador is wrong, the thread is not systematically monitored. However due to the spam at PT, links with excessive hyphens did end up being blocked as potential spam.

Sal's posts are only removed to the Bathroom wall when his comments, like those of others, do not have any relevance to the thread. Since the Panda's Thumb has an Open Submission policy, and since as far as I know Sal has not taken any steps to submit his criticisms to PT, his objections seem hollow.

We at the Panda’s Thumb would like to develop an open submission policy to encourage guest contributions to our blog. We are currently looking at a two stage process. First abstracts are submitted and if accepted a full length post will follow. We are also looking into having a way for readers to alert us to news stories that we may have missed.

Now, the purpose of this post is to get feedback on this idea from the community. If you have any suggestions on how to structure the open submission policy, we’d like to hear from you in the comments.

Sal complains about vague 'misrepresentations' being hurled at him. If he has some specific examples then let him present them. It's one thing to complain about misrepresentations, it's another supporting them. Too often, such accusations seem to be more a way to avoid dealing with the arguments than based in reality. If Salvador has any particular arguments in mind, then I encourage him to submit a proposal to PT. Unlike other websites, PT is not intent on silencing its critics. On the contrary, I am on the record myself stating that I believe Sal makes an excellent ally :-)

I’ve pointed out to Salvador exactly what he needs to do to show that his boasting about the Elsberry and Shallit 2003 paper being the wrong citation to critique Meyer 2004 by was on track. These items are things that if I were wrong about, Salvador should quickly be able to show that I was wrong on. This is the FOURTH TIME I’ve entered this in response to Salvador’s comments here since August 31st. I’ll email them to him, too, just to eliminate any weak apologetic that he had somehow overlooked the previous presentations.

Wes observes that

I posted that on August 31st. As far as I can tell, neither Salvador nor any other ID advocate has made the slightest headway in showing that I was inaccurate in either claim made above. Salvador has taken up an aggressive grandstanding technique, though I think that it is obvious to all that there is little to no substance as yet to back it up. If I were wrong on the two points above, it seems to me that it would be simplicity itself for some ID advocate to show that I was wrong, and I would have expected that to happen already. I predict that what I’ve written here will again disappear into the ID memory hole of inconveniently true criticisms.

If I’m wrong here, though, I’m willing both to take my lumps and acknowledge whoever it is that shows me to be wrong. I’m still waiting for the documentation. I suspect I will wait a long, long time.

Salvador even stated that he would 'respect the forum conventions' and take the dicussion to antievolution.org boards

Dayton (Jack Krebs) advised me of the conventions of PandasThumb over at ARN.

I will respect this forum coventions and take my discussion over to www.antievolution.org as Jack Krebs suggested. The thread in question about CSI is

Speaking of censorship, it seems to me that ARN has been silencing many a critic since the Sternberg 'affair'. Does that not sound a bit ironic? While ID proponents seem to be free to make any assertion, ID critics are quickly called to 'justice'..